Techniques employ four qualities that reflect the nature of our world. Depending on the circumstance, you should be: hard as a diamond, flexible as a willow, smooth-flowing like water, or as empty as space.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of adaptability in various situations.
Morihei Ueshiba highlights the necessity of adopting different qualities depending on the circumstances we encounter in life. Just as tough as a diamond, flexible as a willow, fluid like water, or empty like space, each of these characteristics represents a strategic response to life's challenges, encouraging us to be versatile and open to change.
In practice
In a motivational speech about handling stress and adversity.
PRACTICE OF THE Art of Peace is an act of faith, a belief in the ultimate power of nonviolence. It is faith in the power of purification and faith in the power of life itself. It is not a type of rigid discipline or empty asceticism. It is a path that follows natural principles, principles, that must be applied to daily living. The Art of Peace should be practiced from the time you rise to greet the morning to the time you retire at night.
Study the teachings of the pine tree, the bamboo, and the plum blossom. The pine is evergreen, firmly rooted, and venerable. The bamboo is strong, resilient, unbreakable. The plum blossom is hardy, fragrant, and elegant.
EACH DAY OF HUMAN life contains joy and anger, pain and pleasure, darkness and light, growth and decay. Each moment is etched with nature’s grand design-do not try to deny or oppose the cosmic order of things.
Foster and polish the warrior spirit while serving in the world; illuminate the path according to your inner light.
THE BODY SHOULD be triangular, the mind circular. The triangle represents the generation of energy and is the most stable physical posture. The circle symbolizes serenity and perfection, the source of unlimited techniques. The square stands for solidity, the basis of applied control.
Aikido is the spirit of loving protection for all beings.
These small things - nutrition, place, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness - are inconceivably more important than everything one has taken to be important so far.
If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself.
An economy where advertisers thrive while journalists and artists struggle, reflects the values of a society more interested in deception and manipulation than in truth and beauty
There can be no peace in the world so long as a large proportion of the population lack the necessities of life and believe that a change of the political and economic system will make them available. World peace must be based on world plenty.
Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a_x000D_ _x000D_ hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond_x000D_ _x000D_ himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.
All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard.
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